Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution
On the Current Significance of the Writings of the Group of International Communists (Holland)
Lecture by Hermann Lueer at the Jour Fix of the Initiative Sozialistisches Forum (Freiburg) 7 May 2024
My lecture is divided into three parts:
In the first part I will say something about the history of the Group of International Communists.
The second part is about their main work, the Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution.
Finally, in the third part, I will deal with two widespread objections to labor-time accounting.
Let us begin with the history of the GIC and the political background against which they developed their writings.
The GIC was not a traditional political party claiming leadership, but an international group of communists.
Their aim was to use agitation to support the development of the workers’ consciousness necessary for a successful social revolution.
As the GIC had no founding statutes or official party membership, there is no precise information about their formation and membership.
The GIC probably emerged around 1926 from the milieu of the Communist Workers Party of the Netherlands and the Communist Workers Party of Germany.
The most prominent members of the group were Jan Appel and Henk Canne Meijer.
Anton Pannekoek was certainly the group’s most important supporter and also its mentor, contributing many articles to their publications.
Another supporter was Paul Mattick, who published many GIC articles in the International Council Correspondence, which he edited in the USA.
In their publications, the GIC mainly dealt with the self-organization of the proletariat, the foundations of the organization of communist society and the corresponding criticism of Bolshevism and Anarchism.
From 1928 to 1933 they published the Press Service of the International Communists of Holland. It was published in German and Dutch.
From 1934 to 1937, they published 22 issues of the International Council Correspondence in German, excerpts of which were published in the USA in the International Council Correspondence edited by Paul Mattick.
After the Nazis banned all communist propaganda in Germany, the journal Council Communism was published in Dutch only from 1938 to 1940. Its subtitle was: Marxist Journal for the Independent Class Struggle.
Their main work – Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution – appeared in 1930.
The first German edition was confiscated and largely destroyed shortly after publication.
A fully revised and improved Dutch edition appeared in 1931, first in excerpts in their Press Service of the International Communists-Holland and in 1935 as a second edition in book form.
The text of the first German edition was reprinted in Germany in 1970 and also translated into English. The completely revised and improved second edition, however, remained largely unnoticed in Dutch for the next 85 years. It was only in 2020 that a German-English translation was made available for the first time.
In their theoretical considerations, the GIC was strongly influenced by the negative developments of the revolutions in Germany and Russia.
On the one hand, the failure of the council revolution in Germany. On the other hand, the increasing development towards state capitalism in Russia and the associated destruction of the soviet organizations.
In this double defeat, the GIC recognized a deficiency in the prevailing critique of capitalism or, to put it another way, a deficiency in the understanding of the fundamental principles of communist relations of production that could be derived from the critique of capitalism.
They experienced how the working class was quite capable of conquering power through self-organization in the revolutionary factory organizations. However, they did not know what to do with the council power they had gained.
They saw how the means of production were socialized in Russia without the exploitation and domination of the working class being abolished.
They saw how the counter-revolutionary efforts of the Social Democracy and the Bolshevik Party – to domesticate the revolutionary factory organizations in the sense of a state order – met with no significant resistance from the working class.
There was a lack of awareness of how people could have linked their operational units in economic self-management in the sense of overall social production. In other words, on what economic basis they could have shaped and thus secured the power gained through the council revolution in the sense of an association of free and equal people.
Or to put it another way: the critique had not progressed far enough to recognize that the questions of the political and economic organization of the revolution could not be separated from one another.
The weak point of the criticism of Bolshevism that existed at the time among anarchists as well as the radical left wing of the Marxists was that their criticism was essentially aimed at the political form of organization of the domination of the working class.
This began with Rosa Luxemburg, who, just one year after the October Revolution, anticipated the criticism of the party dictatorship that would later become increasingly vocal.
The fundamental error of Lenin-Trotsky’s theory, Luxemburg argued, was that it opposed dictatorship to democracy. The dictatorship of the proletariat must be ‘the work of the class, and not of a small, leading minority in the name of the class, i.e. it must emerge at every turn from the active participation of the masses, be under their direct influence, be subject to the control of the entire public, emerge from the growing political education of the masses.[1]
Two years later, the so-called Workers Opposition, which had formed as a faction within the Bolshevik Party, took a similar approach.
The starting point was the growing discontent of the workers with the miserable working conditions and the domination of the working class by the party-appointed directors and the party-controlled trade unions. This discontent was expressed by the Workers Opposition at the Xth Party Congress in 1921 as follows
»The essence of the dispute is whether we will realize communism with the help of the workers or over their heads by means of the Soviet bureaucrats. … The workers’ organizations must move from the present passive participation to active and individual participation in the administration of the whole economy.«[2]
However, how the active and individual participation in the management of the entire economy was to be realized in economic terms remained completely unclear in their criticism.
The same was true of the Kronstadt uprising, which was organized as a non-party opposition parallel to the 10th Party Congress in March 1921 under the slogan “All power to the soviets – no power to the party”.
The criticism of the Kronstadters was directed solely against the political form of the organization of power. The economic program of the Bolsheviks, which created the social contradictions that required regulation by state power, remained uncriticized.
The same applies to Rudolf Rocker, who in the same year formulated the anarchist critique of Bolshevism in his essay »The Bankruptcy of Russian State Communism« as follows:
»The idea of soviets is the most definite expression of what we understand by a social revolution and encompasses the entire constructive side of socialism. Dictatorship won in Russia, which is why there are no more soviets there.«[3]
Even Trotsky later hesitantly agreed with this argument relating to the political form of rule. In 1935, he wrote in his book »The Revolution Betrayed«:
»The degeneration of the party became both cause and consequence of the bureaucratization of the state.«[4]
In contrast to this superficial critique, which focused only on the political form of rule, the GIC developed their Marxist political-economic critique of both the Bolshevik program and the program of the anarchist groups by adding decisive economic content to the politically left communist demand – All Power to the Councils!
For the GIC, the key questions of communist transformation were:
What economic changes, what changes in legal relations must the working class enforce in the revolution in order to retain power?
How must the workers’ political victory be anchored economically?
What are the economic prerequisites for the abolition of wage labor?
In response to these questions, in 1930 the GIC published their book »Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution«, which Henk Canne Meijer described as follows:
» … as long as discussions are conducted on the unfruitful basis of whether there should be more or less ‘centralism’ or ‘federalism’, no progress can be made on this question. Communist working life is not an organizational question of centralism or federalism, but the implementation of other principles for the circulation of goods in society and for the distribution of the social product.«[5] »The discussion about ‘federalism or centralism’ makes no sense if one does not first point out what the economic basis of this ‘federalism’ or this ‘centralism’ will be. In reality, the forms of organization of a given economy are not, on the whole, arbitrary forms; they are derived from the very principles of that economy.«[6]
In other words:
Without a critique of the economic principles underlying political forms of organization, merely demanding better forms of organization is idealistic wishful thinking that lacks the basis for successful implementation.
Contrary to the prevailing critique of Bolshevism, the GIC therefore pointed out that the development of the Russian Revolution had shown that it was not enough to demand only the abolition of capitalist private ownership of the means of production, nor was it enough to demand all power to the councils and the abolition of wage labor.
These demands, the GIC writes, have no more consistency than a soap bubble if one does not know how to create the economic basis on which wage labor can no longer exist and on which it will first be possible for people to organize and manage their economic relations independently.
Enlightenment about the principles of the capitalist relation of production and the damage it necessarily causes to the majority of the population must go hand in hand with the fundamental principles of a relation of production that abolishes wage labor. These principles can and must be derived from the critique of capitalism.
These are two sides of the same coin. The critique must prove itself in the alternative.
In its critical examination of the various anarchist and Marxist currents, the GIC states in their »Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution« that, as far as the economic foundations on which wage labor no longer exists have been dealt with at all, the ideas are either of a negative nature: no money, no value, no market, no wage labor. Or they are superficial phrases, i.e. not elaborated on in terms of content, such as: Socialization of the means of production or the slogan popular with the anarchists as well as with Lenin and even Stalin: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
However, since even in an association of self-determined people freed from wage labor, only what is produced by the working time spent by the members of society and by the productivity achieved in their social division of labor can be consumed, society, by taking over the means of production, is faced with the challenge of harmonizing the design of its working conditions (i.e. the equipment of workplaces as well as the scope of working hours and intensity of work) with its consumption needs based on the division of labor.
The hollow phrase that, after the socialization of the means of production, the members of society would rationally regulate their production and consumption for the purpose of satisfying their needs therefore requires economic concretization.
So much for the historical and political context of the GIC’s writings.
This brings me to the content of the »Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution«.
But first a few methodological remarks:
Firstly, it is important to note that we are dealing with fundamental principles. In other words, it is not a question of working out all the possible details of communist planning and administration. The crucial point, the only point at issue in what follows, is, as Marx put it, the inevitable basis of the relation of production on which communist society can develop.
2. The organization of the councils is assumed in the book to be the starting point of the social revolution. However, in its further development it is not the subject of the »Fundamental Principles«, nor are the detailed questions. The book is about the economy, the relationship of production in communist society, on the basis of which the organization of the councils can develop.
3. the technical aspects of how the labor-time accounting can be implemented in practice are not the subject of the following.
For example:
– The production formula that can be used to determine the total labor-time of a product, starting from the raw materials, through the means of production, to the final product.
– The determination of the average social labor-time per industry by public accounting.
– The deductions for various social funds and the determination of the remaining factor for individual consumption.
All these technical aspects of the implementation of the labor-time accounting, which are described in detail in the GIK book, are not the subject of the following.
The following is solely concerned with the political-economic statement of the »Fundamental Principles«, i.e. the flip side of Marx’s critique of capitalism. Or as the GIC puts it:
The abolition of wage labor and »the reorganization of social relations is one act; they are only two sides of the same action.«[7]
Those who do not share the political-economic core statement of the »Fundamental Principles« are not interested in questions of technical implementation anyway, or they are just looking for hairs in the soup.
Those who find the political-economic core statement of the »Fundamental Principles« correct can easily read up on the technical implementation or constructively expand on what the GIC has explained.
I repeat this thought once again because I consider it to be very important for the discussion of the fundamental principles:
Those who do not share the central political-economic statement of the »Fundamental Principles« are not interested in questions of technical implementation or are biasedly looking for evidence of the impossibility of implementation.
Those who find the central political-economic statement of the »Fundamental Principles« correct can easily read up on the technical implementation and all related questions or constructively expand on what the GIC has explained.
There is therefore no point in discussing various aspects of the technical implementation of the fundamental principles before agreement has been reached on their central political-economic statement.
With these methodological preliminary remarks, I now move on to the presentation of the central political-economic statement of the »Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution«.
In terms of content, the fundamental principles of the economy of communist society are identical with what Marx and Engels briefly outlined at various points in their critique of capitalism.
In communist society, according to Marx in his critique of the Gotha Program, the individual producer »receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost.«[8]
The »Fundamental Principles« are nothing other than an elaboration of this idea, derived from Marx’s critique of capitalism, on the communist relation of production.
The starting point of the GIC’s considerations is the question: What are the economic preconditions for the abolition of wage labor?
The GIC writes:
»Domination and exploitation are extraordinarily simple in their causes and immediately comprehensible for everyone: they are enclosed in the fact that the worker is separated from the means of production. The capitalist is the owner of the means of production – the worker owns only his labor power; – the capitalist owns the conditions under which the worker must work. …
As simple as the basis for the domination of the working class is, as simple is the formulation for the abolition of wage slavery … This abolition can only consist in the abolition of the separation of work and the work product, that the right of disposal over the work product and therefore also over the means of production is again given to the workers.
That is the essence of communist production.«[9]
With the socialization of the means of production, i.e. with the transition to communal production, the problem of a new mode of production is therefore only posed.
The workers’ movement lived in the confidence »that communism must come “by itself” when private ownership of means of production is abolished. But the assumption that in doing so, wage labor must necessarily disappear, is wrong.«[10]
The GIC, on the other hand, emphasized that communal ownership is not an end in itself, but only the means to enable the workers to dispose of the means of production, to abolish the separation of labor and the product of labor, in order to be able to abolish wage labor.
»For the proletarian, the goal of social revolution can be no other than to determine through his labor at the same time his relationship to the social product. This means:
Abolition of wage labor!
Labor is the measure of consumption!
It is the only condition for putting the management and administration of social production in the hands of the workers themselves..«[11]
This central starting point, from which the GIC has formulated its »Fundamental Principles«, can also be expressed in this way:
Although exploitation has appeared in various forms throughout human history, it has always consisted at its core in the appropriation of other people’s labor. »The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labor, and one based on wage-labor, lies only in the mode in which this surplus labor is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the laborer.«[12]
In capitalist relations of production, this is how it works:
On the basis of the bourgeois legal order, i.e. the freedom and equality of the person and the right to own the means of production, not only products become commodities, but also the labor power of those who have no other means of production than their labor power.
In this wage relationship, the buyer of the labor power possesses of the labor power and the product of its labor and uses the difference between what he pays in wages and what the labor has created in value for his personal profit.
In this way, capitalist society reproduces the relationship between rich and poor, rulers and ruled, wage labor and capital.
But it is far more than the relationship between rich and poor that constitutes the capitalist relationship of production.
The purpose of increasing capital runs like a red thread through every corner of capitalist society. From research and development to production, advertising and sales, the purpose of increasing capital determines not only whether production takes place at all and for whom, but also what is produced, where and how.
In contrast to this, the appropriation of surplus value in wage labor is abolished with the enforcement of individual labor-time as the measure of the share of the social labor product.
At the same time, this puts an end to the domination of those who control the social production apparatus and thus also its products. With the ownership of the means of production, the exchange of commodities based on property disappears and with it value with its general material form, money. Money, as the general power of access and purpose of economic activity (keyword: capital accumulation), is abolished.
This means:
Everything that does not benefit the producers, who are also the consumers, from the adopted capitalist organization of labor will be discontinued and dissolved.
Who wants now to continue to invest labor and effort in the design of yogurt cups that make consumers think they contain more than they do, or in the development of nutritionally inferior foods that are superficially spiced up with various chemical flavorings and colorings, or in genetically modified seeds that cannot be propagated by the farms themselves, or in the design and distribution of advertising that no one wants in their mailboxes or as an annoying interruption in the cinema or on television?
As soon as the exchange value, money and its multiplication, is no longer the all-determining purpose of every operational organization, the objective criteria of consumer goods production will automatically become the focus of the entire production process and determine the transformation process of the entire economy.
If, after the socialization of the means of production, the maxim is no longer competition for private advantage, but cooperation, then the works councils of the enterprises competing with each other in capitalism will directly discuss how synergies can be drawn from the existing knowledge and the production capacities built up against each other for the common good, instead of excluding each other from this knowledge through patents and trade secrets.
When producers no longer have to sell their labor on the labor market, the question of where to produce will no longer be decided by the different value of local labor in so-called low-wage countries, but by the objective criteria of consumer goods production. As soon as workplace design is no longer a cost factor in the profit calculation of the owners of the means of production, the producers themselves will determine the equipment and organization of their work.
However, the implementation of the labor-time accounting – which abolishes the separation of individual labor and social labor product – does not only abolish the capitalist relation of production.
The implementation of labor-time accounting, which makes the relationship between labor input and output transparent for all members of society, also creates the material basis on which collective production planning becomes possible.
Production planning in which people can decide for themselves what they want after individually weighing up the input (individual labor-time) and output (socially necessary labor-time).
On this basis, and only on this basis, does the emancipatory idea that the management of things and the management of production processes by the free association of individuals takes the place of the domination of people become a material reality.
Each member of society can thus determine his or her own individual labor-time and consumption.
Individual needs are weighed against the amount of work required by society and are introduced into the social planning process through consumer desires and the corresponding individual willingness to work.
The question of production and distribution is thus resolved in joint production planning through the calculation of labor-time.
Anton Pannekoek expressed this idea in his major work, »The Workers’ Councils«, as follows:
»Labor is a social process. Each enterprise is part of the productive body of society. The total social production is formed by their connection and collaboration. Like the cells that constitute the living organism, they cannot exist isolated and cut off from the body.
So the organization of the work inside the shop is only one-half of the task of the workers. Over it, a still more important task, stands the joining of the separate enterprises, their combination into a social organization….
How will the quantities of labor spent and the quantities of product to which [the worker] is entitled be measured? In a society where the goods are produced directly for consumption there is no market to exchange them; and no value, as expression of the labor contained in them establishes itself automatically out of the processes of buying and selling. Here the labor spent must be expressed in a direct way by the number of hours. The administration keeps book [records] of the hours of labor contained in every piece or unit quantity of product, as well as of the hours spent by each of the workers. In the averages over all the workers of a factory, and finally, over all the factories of the same category, the personal differences are smoothed out and the personal results are intercompared….
As a plain and intelligible numerical image the process of production is laid open to everybody’s views. Here mankind views and controls its own life. What the workers and their councils devise and plan in organized collaboration is shown in character and results in the figures of bookkeeping. Only because they are perpetually before the eyes of every worker the direction of social production by the producers themselves is rendered possible.«[13]
In other words:
»The new relationship between the producer and the social product«, which forces the abolition of wage labor, is at the same time the basis for the planned connection in the communist relation of production.
On the basis of the means of production socialized through the labor-time accounting, a decentralized planning of production and distribution takes place, similar to the market economy.
There is no central planning authority that dictates to the individual operational units how and what they have to produce.
The starting point for production decisions is the needs of the members of society. This can be in the form of empirical data from previous demand – the bakery knows how many rolls it usually sells per day – or in the form of direct orders – production on demand. In order to satisfy demand, the operational units place orders with their suppliers, including raw material suppliers.
In the communist »association of free and equal people«, the basis for the planned organization of production, just as in the market economy, is a balance between input and output.
In order to safeguard the social reproduction context – the members of society cannot consume more than they are willing to produce – the social average expenditure of labor-time per unit, calculated on the basis of the actual labor-time incurred, is compared with the individual labor-time accounts.
The different productivity of the individual operations plays no role in this coupling of giving (individual labor-time) and taking (social expenditure per unit).
Consumers draw in relation to their individual labor-time accounts at all operations to the social average production time of the respective product, which means that the result of every change in productivity accrues equally to all members of society.
In contrast to capitalism, the economic existence of individual operations in a cooperative production context does not depend on whether their own operational expenditure leads to a profit or loss on the market compared to the social average.
It is true that in the context of cooperative production there is also a difference between the average social labor-time and the operational labor-time. Depending on the better or worse quality of the material means of production or the quality of the work, the individual operations also produce at different costs in the chain of labor hours.
However, the difference between the operative labor-time and the social average labor-time – which in capitalism, behind the backs of the members of society, decides how much or whether the individual labor contained in the product is socially recognized as exchange value – is eliminated in the context of cooperative production in that the deficits and surpluses within the industry balance each other out.
Competition between operations is eliminated. Their reproduction is regulated by the planned cooperative context and not by the disposal of money.
The offsetting of mutual deliveries and services in the amount of the average social expenditure per unit is not a transfer of money, which as an asset is the prerequisite for obtaining the necessary means of production.
In cooperation, the mutual offsetting of services in the form of deficits or surpluses is merely information in the context of open social accounting.
In the context of cooperative production, the different productivity of the individual operations – which in the context of the open bookkeeping of all operations shows the extent to which the individual operation deviates from the social average time – merely serves as an indication of possible increases in efficiency in the context of joint production.
With regard to the planned use of social resources, producers will therefore not only pay attention to the efficiency of their own internal work processes out of their own interest in an organization of work that is appropriate for their supply, but will also take a look at how the results of their work are dealt with in the further course of production.
A work organization that, for example, recognizes a wasteful use of its work results in the labor-time accounting of the subsequent production stage will, in its own interest, speak out critically with the support of the inter-company accounting organization.
Even if it looks very similar on the surface, the decisive difference is that here it is not decided behind the producers’ backs via the competition whether or how individual work is valued and thus socially recognized.
Their joint social activity does not become a movement of material constraints (keyword: commodity and money), under whose control they are.
Rather, the association of producers consciously decides together what, how and where they want to produce together, and thus also which conclusions they want to draw from the differences in productivity.
The optimization of production, taking into account productivity differences, is a conscious matter between the inter-operational organizations of public accounting and the individual operations.
The operational units acts as an independent unit that establishes its own relationships with other operations with regard to consumer demand.
In contrast to the capitalist production relationship, the operational units do not operate in competition with each other on their own account, but in cooperation on behalf of society.
The fact that productivity falls under these cooperative production conditions compared to capitalist competition is consciously accepted.
By enforcing individual labor-time as the measure of the share of the product of social labor, people are ultimately no longer included as variables in an external cost-benefit calculation.
The reduction of their wages and the extension of their working hours or the intensification of their labor efforts no longer improve the cost-benefit ratio for the buyer of the labor power.
The poverty and blackmailability of the members of society who are separated from the means of production is no longer a means of increasing the productivity of labor against the interests and health of the producers for the purpose of the private enrichment of the owners of the means of production.
The producers themselves decide on their working conditions and thus on the yield of their labor.
What is lost in productivity through the absence of the sting of competition is gained through planned cooperation on the other hand through the elimination of various functions and activities that are necessary under capitalism but superfluous under communism:
The following areas can be mentioned here as examples:
The category of intellectual property, which is self-evident in capitalism but absurd in a cooperative relationship of production, since it promotes the exclusion of existing knowledge rather than the exchange of knowledge.
The »double functions« and overcapacities built up in the competition for market share, which are repeatedly destroyed in the course of cyclical capitalist crises.
The enormous amount of advertising and the huge sales organizations, whose services no one confuses with useful information.
The »services« of banks, stock exchanges, insurance companies, law firms, financial, legal and social institutions, which are only useful in the context of market competition for money.
This brings me to the summary of the political-economic content of the »Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution«.
On the one hand – on the side of the critique of capitalism – the enforcement of individual labor-time as the measure of the share of the product of socially average labor is the abolition of the wage-labor relationship and thus at the same time the socialization of the means of production.
Instead of value as the purpose of production, which from research and development to production and distribution becomes a material constraint on the members of society through competition, the purpose of satisfying needs is consciously weighed against the social labor required for this.
On the other hand, the enforcement of individual labor-time as a measure of the share of the social labor product is the basis for the self-administration of the members of society based on the division of labor.
The abolition of the contradictions arising from the ownership of the means of production and wage labor is at the same time associated with the withering away of the state functions arising from these contradictions.
Or once again in the words of the GIK:
The abolition of wage labor and the communist »reorganization of social relations are one act; they are only two sides of the same action.«[14]
This brings me to my third and final point:
The widespread misunderstandings or objections to labor-time accounting.
The first widespread objection is that labor certificates are synonymous with money and thus capitalism would in principle be perpetuated rather than overcome by labor-time accounting.
This superficial view – banknotes are paper bills and labor certificates are paper bills and both mediate access to products – overlooks the fact that money and labor certificates are not objects by their very nature, but expressions of different relations of production.
In the mutual relationship of exclusion between owners, individuals can only establish their social relationship by comparing or evaluating the productivity of their individual labor in competition with each other on the markets.
Their individual labor is socially recognized only in relation to socially necessary labor.
With the implementation of individual labor-time as a measure of the share of the social labor product, on the other hand, the labor contained in the labor products is not assessed via the detour of evaluation by competition on the markets or by state authorities, but is recognized directly and immediately as social via the individual labor-time.
In other words:
On the basis of isolated private labor, individual labor must prove itself in exchange as social labor.
On the basis of the labor-time accounting, labor is set as social with production, i.e. the exchange of products is not at all the medium through which the participation of the individual in social production is mediated.
»Mediation must, of course, take place.
In the first case, which proceeds from the independent production of individuals … mediation takes place through the exchange of commodities, through exchange value and through money; all these are expressions of one and the same relation.
In the second case, the presupposition is itself mediated; i.e. a communal production, communality, is presupposed as the basis of production. The labour of the individual is posited from the outset as social labour.
Thus, whatever the particular material form of the product he creates or helps to create, what he has bought with his labour is not a specific and particular product, but rather a specific share of the communal production. He therefore has no particular product to exchange. His product is not an exchange value. The product does not first have to be transposed into a particular form in order to attain a general character for the individual.
Instead of a division of labour, such as is necessarily created with the exchange of exchange values, there would take place an organization of labour whose consequence would be the participation of the individual in communal consumption.
In the first case the social character of production is posited only post festum with the elevation of products to exchange values and the exchange of these exchange values.
In the second case the social character of production is presupposed, and participation in the world of products, in consumption, is not mediated by the exchange of mutually independent labours or products of labour. It is mediated, rather, by the social conditions of production within which the individual is active.«[15]
In contrast to money-mediated production and distribution, the implementation of labor-time accounting establishes a different relationship between the producers and the social product. A directly social relationship in which the individuals determine their relationship to the social product through their labor.
There can therefore be no question of an equality of production relations.
The intellectually more sophisticated variant of this superficial equation is the so-called value critique.
Gilles Dauvè formulates it as follows:
»… the snag is that, value being the amount of social labour-time necessary to produce an item, a rational accounting system in labour-time would be equivalent to the rule of value without the medium of money.«[16] »… Marx was in contradiction with himself when he presented social labour time as something different from and opposed to value….«[17]
Moishe Postone argues in a similar way. He abstracts from the property relations that determine the capitalist relations of production in order to then interpret the interrelated Marxian categories of commodity, abstract labor and value as essential characteristics of the generalized division of labor.
Terms such as commodified society and generalized division of labor, exchange and transfer, commodities and products are used synonymously throughout his 400-page reformulation of Marx’s categories. Postone writes:
»Marx’s theory should, on one level, be seen as an attempt to analyze the underlying structural bases of a society characterized by the universal exchangeability of products. … That is, a new form of interdependence comes into being: No one consumes what one produces, but one’s own labor or labor products, nevertheless, function as the necessary means of obtaining the products of others. In serving as such a means, labor and its products in effect preempt that function on the part of manifest social relations. … The function of labor as a socially mediating activity is what he [Marx] terms ‘abstract labor’. … abstract labor is specific to capitalism.«[18]
As already shown, this is wrong.
The value around which everything revolves in capitalism is not sufficiently defined by the attributes abstract and socially necessary. Abstract labor is the substance and socially necessary is the measure of value. Both together, however, do not establish a relationship of value. Only on the basis of property relations must the social relation of the division of labor be established indirectly through the exchange of mutually exclusive owners, by valuing individual labor on the markets according to the socially necessary (i.e. practically average) labor-time.
Under this condition, and only under this condition, when the private producers in competition are directed to exchange their labor for what it is worth, i.e., for its equivalent in the form of socially necessary labor, the social labor coagulated in the products is transformed into value, which serves as the basis for the exchange of commodities by the private producers.
Abstract labor thus becomes the substance of the economic category of value only when it is the product of separate, independently performed private labor.
As already explained in connection with the presentation of the »Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution«, the critique of the fundamental principles of the capitalist mode of production must fit together with the fundamental principles of a mode of production that abolishes capitalism, which can be derived from this critique of capitalism.
They are two sides of the same coin.
Accordingly, a look at the ideas of the proponents of the so-called value critique of a »post-capitalist society« illustrates the anti-communism of their reformulation of the central categories of Marx’s critique of political economy.
Moishe Postone explicitly addresses socialism in two places in the concluding remarks of his 400-page critique of Marx.
»My intention, however, has not been to elaborate a full theory of the nature, development, and possible overcoming of advanced capitalist society, …. This work is preliminary, a work of theoretical clarification and reorientation on a fundamental logical level.«[19]
»This reformulation of the distinguishing determinations of capitalism and socialism is rich, theoretically powerful, and germane to contemporary conditions – enough so to warrant further serious development of the theoretical approach I have presented here..«[20]
However, Postone had no interest in working out a complete theory of the possible abolition of capitalist society during the next 25 years until his death.
Even the German Crisis Group has still not moved beyond the phrase-like idealism of »new forms of social organization«, for which »new forms of social mediation« still need to be developed.[21]
In contrast, Gilles Dauvè consistently thought through the critique of abstract labor derived from the reformulation of the critique of value.
Dauvè rejects Marx’s remark that work is not a game.
»Only when we do away with the social division of labour, and with all sorts of separation, will daily life reach a point of universality unmediated by commodities.«[22] »… unlike Marx, we attempt to go beyond the limits of the productive sphere. For us, the “totality of capacities” exceeds the sphere of production and subverts the very concept of an economy by rejecting time accounting and by directly incorporating self-enjoyment into what was formerly production.«[23]
»… why shouldn’t hunger be enjoyment as well, like desire during the preliminaries to lovemaking, which is actively involved in the satisfaction of the lovers’ need?«[24]
»For the person who is no longer afraid of going hungry, the waiting can be an added pleasure, like foreplay is an enjoyable part of lovemaking.«[25]
This brings me to the last point, the second common objection. That is: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
A widespread illusion in radical left-wing movements, both then and now, is the idea that in a post-capitalist society it is possible to replace capitalist monetary accounting with an economy in kind.
An idea that the bourgeois economist Ludwig von Mises refuted in detail as early as 1922 in his book »Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis«.
Under very simple conditions, it is possible to look at the entire process from the start of production to its completion and assess whether alternative processes require less effort or deliver more products for a given amount of effort. For more complex processes based on the division of labor, this is no longer possible.
For example, when deciding between solar and wind power for energy production, the individual production processes and possible substitutes are so diverse that vague estimates are no longer sufficient and more precise calculations are required to form an opinion on the cost-effectiveness of the project.
However, calculations can only be made with units that refer to a scale. If economic calculation is switched off, it is no longer possible to make a rational choice between different alternatives in terms of the relationship between cost and return.
The economy in kind is therefore the abolition of rationality in the economy.
In-kind economic considerations can show how certain goals can be achieved from a technical perspective through the use of various means. However, they do not provide any information about the relationship between input and output. Projects and designs by engineers therefore remain incomplete if input and output cannot be compared on a common basis.
In terms of production, most people still understand that the rational planning and organization of production processes requires an abstract measure. However, it is a mistake to believe that production and consumption can be separated in this respect. Production and consumption are ultimately connected. Production takes place in order to consume and in order to be able to consume, the corresponding production is required.
If it were irrelevant to the desire to consume how much labor is required for this, then it would also be irrelevant on the production side whether one production process is more labor-intensive than the other.
It is therefore contradictory to think that one can ignore the connection between consumption and the labor required for it. The hollow phrase that needs should be the measure of production therefore also requires economic concretization.
Needs are not the measure of themselves.
Only when labor is no longer necessary to satisfy needs does the need become the measure of itself. Just like in the famous land of milk and honey.
As long as labor is necessary to satisfy needs, needs are always in relation to the social labor necessary to satisfy them.
In terms of the rationality of their economy based on the division of labor, people must therefore be able to weigh up whether their need is worth the effort.
They need a measure for their consumer desires in order to be able to weigh up effort and income.
In addition to their subjective need for this or that, they need an objective measure that relates the intuitive need to the labor required to achieve it.
If the economic relationship to the work required is ignored, irrational consumption decisions (waste) and supply shortages are inevitable.
Consumption without an economic measure then does not mean »taking according to need«, but allocation by a higher authority.
Even the ideal of council democracy does not help here, as the members of society lack the information necessary for a rational decision without the labor-time accounting.
To save the honor of Karl Marx, it should be added here that he named three conditions for the so-called higher phase of communist society:
The decisive economic condition can be expressed as follows:
After the productive forces have increased to such an extent that the marginal costs of production are approaching zero, can society write on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
Or with the words of the GIC:
»Marx assumes this system of social book-keeping to be in general applicable to a production process in which labour is social; that is to say, it is equally applicable whether communism is still at an early stage of its development, or whether the principle ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’ (the higher stage of communism) has already been achieved. In other words: the organisation of economic life may in the course of the various periods of development move through various stages, but the stable basis for all of them nevertheless remains the unit of average social labour-time.«[26]
[1] Rosa Luxemburg, Zur russischen Revolution, in: R. Luxemburg und die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden, Dietz Verlag 1990, S. 158
[2] Die russische Arbeiteropposition, Rowohlt 1972, S. 150f
[3] Rudolf Rocker, Der Bankrott des russischen Staatssozialismus, Underground Press; Berlin 1968, S. 103
[4] Leo Trotzki, The Revolution Betrayed, Chapter 5.2
[5] Rätekommunismus. Zeitschrift für selbständige Klassenbewegung, Red & Black Books 2022, S. 94
[6] Henk Canne Meijers, Die Arbeiterrätebewegung in Deutschland, Edition Soziale Revolution 1985, S. 22
[7] GIC, From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!, Red & Black Books 2021, S. 25
[8] Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
[9] GIC, Fundamental Principles of communist production and distribution, Red & Black Books 2020, p. 23
[10] GIC, Fundamental Principles of communist production and distribution, Red & Black Books 2020, p. 24
[11] GIC, Fundamental Principles of communist production and distribution, Red & Black Books 2020, p. 47
[12] Karl Marx, Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, p. 164/p. 153
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf
[13] Anton Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils (Oakland: AK Press, 2003) www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1947/workers-councils.htm#h7
[14] GIC, From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!, Red & Black Books 2021, S. 25
[15] Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Notebook I – The Chapter on Money
[16] Gilles Dauvè, Eclipse and re-emergence of the Communist Movement, p. 95
[17] Ibid., p. 119
[18] Moishe Postone, Time, Labor and Social Domination, Cambridge University Press 1993, p. 148/ 150 /150
[19] Ibid., p. 394
[20] Ibid., p. 398
[21] Norbert Trenkle, Die Arbeit in Zeiten des fiktiven Kapitals
[22] Bruno Astarian and Gilles Dauve, Everything Must Go! The Abolition of Value, p. 140
[23] Ibid., p. 121
[24] Ibid., p. 124
[25] Ibid., p. 173
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